What I’ve really been doing

There is a certain indignity in being able to rattle off the names of the last dozen or so stars of the The Bachelor and The Bachelorette reality TV series, which — impossibly — have been on television since before most middle school students were born. It’s a wholly useless talent, kind of like being able to fit your whole fist in your mouth, though children at least get a kick out of watching you try to stuff your knuckles behind your teeth.

The same can’t be said for when a purportedly intelligent adult arrests dinnertime conversation with an update on how Emily and Jef are doing after their surprise Season 8 engagement (they broke up, by the way), which instantly suffocates the room in a thick fog of vicarious embarrassment and pity. Even the children present, who don’t entirely follow the conversation, somehow understand that someone in the room has admitted to something deeply shameful. Hoping to cut the tension, you feel you have no choice but to make your hand into a fist and slowly, sheepishly insert it into your mouth.

For me, the new season of The Bachelorette, which started this past Monday, means another eight-week stint of lies about what I’m doing on certain weekday evenings (“Yeah, I was thinking I’d finally dig into the latest Ontario auditor general’s report, thanks.”) and the understanding that I will soon devote the equivalent of a full day of my waking life to watching a preposterously attractive woman try to date 25 single men, all of whom have names like “Brad” and “Nick M.,” as well as equally generic backstories and personalities.

There are all sorts of theories about why people such as myself — who are allegedly capable of following television shows with real plot lines — become so invested in this type of reality TV. For some, the appeal is in turning off one’s brain at the end of a long day and turning on the most vapid, trivial form of entertainment available. For others, it’s about indulging those voyeuristic urges and spying on the neighbours during the most intimate moments of their lives. And perhaps for a select few — and here is where I diagnose myself — there’s a cheap thrill in knowing you’re doing something secret, shameful, of which almost no one would publicly approve. Hey: it was that, or take up smoking.

In the early days, back when The Bachelor/Bachelorette franchise first aired on television, there was some grousing about what effect a fantastical, Photoshopped version of romance would have on our collective conception of marriage. It’s important to recall, however, that this was back in the days before would-be U.S. presidents spoke publicly about their penises in televised debates, so things were a little different back then. Nevertheless, in the years since, the show has proven only as corrosive to our society’s collective health as Britney Spears’ 55-hour marriage, and Kim Kar-